National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell will hear Tom Brady's appeal, according to reports.

The NFL Players Association filed an appeal Thursday of Tom Brady's four-game suspension and asked the league to appoint an independent arbitrator.

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The expected appeal was filed ahead of a 5 p.m. deadline.

"Given the NFL's history of inconsistency and arbitrary decisions in disciplinary matters, it is only fair that a neutral arbitrator hear this appeal," the NFL Players Association said in the appeal. "If Ted Wells and the NFL believe, as their public comments stated, that the evidence in their report is 'direct' and 'inculpatory,' then they should be confident enough to present their case before someone who is truly independent."

The New England Patriots joined Brady's fight against the National Football League with a point-by-point rebuttal of many conclusions of the "Deflategate" report.

"The conclusions of the Wells Report are, at best, incomplete, incorrect and lack context," wrote an attorney for the Patriots in a lengthy website post.

The rebuttal by the Patriots weighs heavily on a contention that there may be a scientific explanation for the loss of air in the footballs and contends there is no real evidence against Brady.

Brady's four-game suspension was issued Monday for his part in the deflation of footballs below the league-mandated minimum for the AFC championship game against the Indianapolis Colts.

Lead investigator Ted Wells insisted he found direct, not just circumstantial, evidence to show Brady knew team employees were deflating footballs. Wells said his findings would have been strong enough to convince a jury under the "preponderance of evidence" standard, which is used in many civil cases.

"There is no evidence that Tom Brady preferred footballs that were lower than 12.5 psi and no evidence anyone even thought that he did," wrote Patriots attorney Daniel Goldberg, who said he was present during all interviews with Patriots personnel during the investigation.

Wells said that text messages between Patriots employees were, in effect, the smoking gun that convinced him of wrongdoing by the team. Goldberg said the "deflator" nickname cited in the NFL's decision to suspend quarterback Tom Brady was about weight loss, not footballs.

"Texts acknowledged to be attempts at humor and exaggeration are nevertheless interpreted as a plot to improperly deflate footballs, even though none of them refer to any such plot," Goldberg wrote.

"Beyond the speculation about the meaning of joking texts, the report relies not on evidence of any wrongdoing, but of ordinary day-to-day conduct of those involved," he said.

Wells concluded the footballs were deliberately deflated by a Patriots' employee.

"The Report dismisses the scientific explanation for the natural loss of psi of the Patriots footballs by inexplicably rejecting the Referee’s recollection of what gauge he used in his pregame inspection," Goldberg wrote.

The NFL will go against an experienced foe in labor lawyer Jeffrey Kessler. He has won other appeals against the league and is helping Brady.